What are the difficulties with doing that? What's
stopping that happening?
Leaving aside the structured-data thing (in the belief that it's not
going to happen anytime soon), could we superficially improve the
upload form?
Say, use Javascript to create form elements (text fields) for the
various bits of {{information}}, and then do some Javascript warning
if you hit 'Upload' but haven't filled one of them out?
Also, would this really solve anything? If you make fields mandatory
don't people just lie to get past them? (which is kind of where we're
at now.) After all you can require someone to fill out a field but you
can't technically require someone to tell the truth (or even care).
In this case, the difference would not be so much in the technical
bells and whistles than in the "shoot on sight" policy for images
which don't have an author specified. A really convincing lie is
probably as difficult to do than a Free image, so most people don't
bother.
This being said, the "mandatory author", if considered, must be
refined (else we'd have to get rid of most Egyptian antiques...). The
strictest implementation I can imagine would be to require the name of
the author for works published after a "safety time", a date before
which works cannot possibly not be in the public domain by now (it's
be in the 150 years order of magnitude, making provisions for the
author living 80 years after he created the work and a 70-year delay
for public domain. Beware, a 150-year provision does NOT take
specifics into account, like the 30 year bonus for authors who "died
for France". Count 200 years to be reasonably sure).
-- Rama